CALVIN RICE | COMPOSER
Calvin Rice (b. 2004) is a composer, pianist, and clarinetist from Seattle, currently pursuing his masters degree in composition at the Eastman School of Music. His compositions range from the most meditative to the most ecstatic, incorporating a wide spectrum of colors and textures. In addition to acoustic works, he composes electronic music for short films and other media using software such as Logic Pro and Max/MSP. He also frequently performs live piano improvisations in concert. Rice has participated in festivals, workshops, and other venues with prominent composers, including Richard Danielpour, Donnacha Dennehey, Michael Djupstrom, Erberk Eryılmaz, Reiko Füting, Matthew Hazzard, Pierre Jalbert, Amy Beth Kirsten, Douglas Knehans, Zhou Long, Angélica Negrón, Shahab Paranj, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Derrick Skye, Dale Trumbore, George Tsontakis, Reza Vali, Melinda Wagner, Chen Yi, and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon.
Most recently, Rice participated in workshops and masterclasses in Europe and the US, including the Du Vert À l'Infini Festival, the Premiere Project Festival, the Vienna Contemporary Composers Festival, the soundSCAPE Composition and Performance Exchange, the Atlantic Music Festival, and the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium.
As a composer/performer, Rice has collaborated with soprano Estelí Gomez and Chatter PDX in concerts at the University of Oregon. As a composer, he has worked with the Choral Arts Initiative, Mivos Quartet, the nonesuch.reedquintet, the Delgani String Quartet, and clarinetist Wonkak Kim in an intercultural ensemble including gayageum. Rice’s piece Mutation was featured on nonesuch.reedquintet’s Southeast Asia tour, which included performances in Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand. The quintet also featured it in their performance for the live round of the 53rd Annual National Fischoff Competition.
In 2026, Rice was a recipient of a BMI composer award, as well as an honorable mention in the Tribeca New Music Young Composer Award for his piece
Mindcrank—Dancebreak. In 2025, he was a winner of the Sound Ensemble Composition Competition, and in 2022, he was a finalist for the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award. His work Morning Light was awarded second place in the wind ensemble category of the American Prize, and his piece Yunhoe (for intercultural chamber ensemble) received third place for the American Prize's Marian Anderson Social Justice Award. In 2024, he won the Opus 7 Robert Scandrett Memorial Award for his choral piece Spellbound, which was later commercially recorded for the album Washington Sings.
Calvin graduated summa cum laude from the University of Oregon with a Bachelors degree in Music Composition, where he studied with Robert Kyr and David Crumb.
